quoting dad
ONE.
me: "dad, are you going to pick me up from school today?"
dad: "yeah, yeah. How about you meet me somewhere."
me: "Okay. Should I go to the McDonald's across the street?"
dad: "Uhhhhhh how about Happy Family?"
me: "Happy Family on Atlantic Street?! Dad, that's like, twenty minutes away by bike, and there's an uphill ride involved too! If you want to pick me up at Happy Family, I might as well just ride all the way home!"
dad: "What! Happy Family is so close!"
me: "No it's not, it's twenty minutes away!"
dad: "Happy Family! Happy Family!"
me: "No Happy Family!! McDonalds!"
dad: "UGH. FINE. Happy Family is right next to McDonalds!"
me: "..."
dad: "Happy Family!"
me: "...Tommy's??"
dad: "YES."
me: "Tommy's Restaurant."
dad: "Tommy happy family-restaurant! Happy Tommy! Tommy's family!"
me: "Yeah, alright. I got it."
dad: "SEE?! SAME THING!!"



TWO.
dad: "Man, that girl at the counter is so STUPID. I told her, i want the one-dollar chicken fajeeta, that one at the end-"
me: "fajita? fa-hee-ta?"
dad: "Yeah. Fa-jee-ta, fa-jee-ter, whatever! And i kept pointing, that one, that one right there on the end! The last one! And she kept saying, 'What? What? I can't see it, i cant see what you're pointing at!'
And i said, fajeeta, fajeeta, and she said, 'i dont understand, which one, what are you pointing at?'
Goddammit, you dumb pig!
So i whipped out my tape measure from my pocket, and stretched it out five, six feet, and i tapped the board above her head, said 'Chicken fajeeta! This one right here!'"



THREE.
me: "Hey dad, how would you feel if you were abducted by aliens?"
dad: "Really excited."
angie: "What if they were going to cut you up and experiment on you??"
dad: "I'm not afraid! I donated bone marrow!"
angie: "Aliens probably wouldn't even hurt as much as bone marrow, huh?"
dad: "I used to say that I wasn't afraid of bone marrow donations, either. Someone would ask, 'So, Jim! Hows about bone marrow!' and I'd say, 'Yeah, right! Not afraid!' But the minute I walked into that hospital room, with the five doctors standing around, one of them twisting his knife in the air, 'Are you Jim Wang?' oh boy, was i scared.
'what are you gonna do to me?' i asked, and one of them put his finger to his neck.
'OH MY GOD,' i said,
'YOURE GONNA SLIT MY THROAT??!'
'No, no, we're just going to cut a hole in it, and stick a long tube down to your stomach.'"



FOUR.
dad: "You know, right after your mother gave birth to you, I wanted to keep you in the basement for a few months, so that you'd have night-vision eyes when you grew up."
shaun: "What!!!"
dad: "Yeah, you know. Like cats and dogs. That would have been cool, man! You could have been superhuman!"
me: "He would have grown to be mentally retarded though. In sociology class we were reading about how mental retardation could be a result of isolation in infancy."
dad: "Pssh, throw the mom in too!"
me: "You wanted to keep mom and shaun in the basement together?!!"
dad: "Well the infant wasn't gonna survive on its own, OBVIOUSLY."
shaun: "I've never heard of this ritual."
dad: "Hey man, it's a secret. I didn't get this from books or tv or anything, I got it from my grandma. Anyways, I talked to your mom about it, but she yelled and called me crazy.
'Okay, okay' i said, 'how about just a few days then,' and she said "no."
So don't blame me because you don't have night-vision eyes, it's not like I didn't try."